Typical automatic clothes dryers include a drum rotatable about a substantially horizontal axis in which clothes and other fabrics to be dried are placed. During operation air is heated, either electrically or by gas, and passed through the drum while the drum is rotated to tumble the clothes. The air passing through the drum subsequently passes through a filter to remove lint and then is vented to the outdoor atmosphere. Normally the drum is mounted in a housing with the open front of the drum spaced from the front panel of the housing. The drying air normally flows from the back to the front of the drum, after which it passes through the filter, mounted at the front of the housing for ease of cleaning by the user. With such a construction it is necessary to include a member to seal the space between the front of the drum and the front panel of the dryer housing. The seal must be concentric with the drum and must not provide any cracks or openings which can catch fabrics being tumbled in the drum. It is also necessary to provide a mounting structure for the filter. Normally the filter either is spaced from the front edge of the drum or overlies a part of the drum front with a grill interposed in front of the filter to prevent contact of the fabrics with the filter.
It is desirable to provide these functions by means of a unitary structure which fully meets the requirements of each of the functions and at the same time facilitates automatic dryer assembly for minimizing production costs.
By our invention there is provided a clothes dryer support structure including a seal support structure which performs multiple functions, is unitary in construction and facilitates automatic assembly.